The Road to Splashdown

Earlier today, I read Patrick Stuart's newest post 'Spider is a Mushroom Now', and immediately found I had to write something about it.

I recommend you read it in full: it's distilled Patrick, and it's set my brain on fire like nothing else has since Veins of the Earth.

In brief, it covers a lot of the sci-fi worldbuilding around the Avatar film series and its paramedia, and follows those premises where they lead, rather than compressing them into an unathorized Dances With Wolves remake.

In particular, he puts a lot of attention on Ey'wa, the planet-spanning fungus consciousness (oh, yeah, now I see why the creator of Veins of the Earth is into this), not just as the mandatory vague animistic deity for Cameron's noble savage blue cat aliens to worship, but as an agent with its own goals and means. While he doesn't mention it explicitly in the post, it's not hard to tease out an interpretation in which Pandora is, on the scale of deep time, a post-apocalyptic setting, the long aftermath of some great conflict or catastrophe in which psychic mushrooms were the ultimate winner: a million years after the zombie apocalypse, a new kind of life blooms again, even intelligent life which the fungus cannot directly control, so it establishes rules.

Remain close to nature, symbiotic, harmonious. Do not separate yourself from nature with walls of stone, or metal tools. It remembers a time when such things existed, and it won the war against them, but it might not win a second time against creatures already adapted to its spores, so best to prevent their creation at all.

Then, of course, the sky-people arrive from their distant star in vessels of metal, so separated from nature that they can traverse the void of space. They're here for the planet's natural resources (a room-temperature superconductor in the first movie, apparently later movies introduce Pandoran whale juice that makes humans immortal???? idk I never watched the sequels), but their presence makes everything much more complicated: not only does their technology tempt the Pandoran sophonts to abandon the laws of Ey'wa and separate themselves from nature for comfort and power (not exactly many takers in the first movie, but apparently later films introduce some breakaway Na'vi factions that take up human weaponry and rebel against Ey'wa), but the humans have also developed their Avatar tech: they can directly transmit one organism's consciousness into another kind of organism, and later films show the technology develop to the point that consciousnesses can be downloaded, cloned, and uploaded virtually at will. 

Not only does this enable the humans to send infiltrators among the Na'vi, but once the Pandoran sophonts learn about it, it raises a lot of very uncomfortable questions about the Na'vi's animistic religion, in which the souls of dead Na'vi find a kind of immortality within the Ey'wa supernetwork, and can even be reincarnated into new bodies later on. 

It's enough of a blow to any religion to discover that aliens (humans, in this case) are real, they've never heard of your god before, and they have weapons that can pose a serious threat to it... it's potentially fatal if it turns out that the primary promise of your religion, a kind of eternal consciousness and life after death, has been replicated by these aliens... but they're just making copies of the dead with no continuity. Blue cat aliens are not prepared for the teletransportation paradox.

So yeah, the humans gotta go. No making trade deals, no special exception to the Laws of Ey'wa so the Sky People can take the shiny minerals they want and then leave. It's an existential fight, one in which Ey'wa has the upper hand, because the other side hasn't realized the scale yet.

The humans think they're fighting a resource war. They laugh in their top scientist's face when she suggests that the natives' belief that their entire planet is a living superconsciousness might have some merit. They haven't even begun to suspect that Ey'wa is playing the long game: that the military losses the human resource extraction machine faces at the hands of technologically underpowered natives is only a tiny fraction of the force a planet-spanning superconsciousness could throw at them if it wanted to. Just token resistance, throwing expendable sophonts into the grinder so the humans don't start worrying that this is all too easy. 

Meanwhile, colossal quantities of Pandora's mineral, and later biochemical, bounty, are on express shipments back to Earth, the latter for the explicit and direct consumption of the human elite.

I can really only quote Stuart here:

Bits of Mycelial Web - if you are taking people and materials off Pandora and transporting them back to earth, surely no matter how careful you are, bits and pieces of mycelial web are going to be transported too? Maybe this doesn’t matter if the pieces are too small to ever come into contact with each other and too small to carry any ‘Eywa’ identity, but what happens if they do meet, and do start to grow in earths Anthrocene Environment - could there be a Hive Mind Plague on Earth? If a Hive Mind emerges on Earth, what would its character be?

She would be derived from whatever fragments of Ey’wa survived in the fungi, but much of her impression of sentience would be born from the human species – a much more cosmopolitan, technophilic, dominant species, which, unlike the Naavi, has not spent several millennia ‘living in balance’ with nature, but trying to control it. Shadow-Ey’wa might be a lot less pleasant to deal with than Hippy Ey’wa, and might also be more directly intelligent – having absorbed the knowledge of relentless centuries of human development. Imperial Ey’wa?

I rather prefer the interpretation that the Pandoran superconsciousness is only appears like a 'hippy' because it has already won millions of years ago: the fungus is, by its nature, imperial, it just operates on a longer timescale. But if it did replicate on earth, how much of the original personality, if we can speak in those terms, would survive? Would humanity influence it back? Could this potentially lead to a colossal, interstellar war between the two superconsciousnesses? Perhaps the original Ey'wa suspects it might lose this bout, but better that my daughter-clone should rule the universe than a bunch of monocorporal monkeys.

But of course, this interpretation is waaaaay off in deep future, just as Ey'wa's theoretical origins lie waaaaay back in deep history. In the near term, it's in battle with humanity's very own superconsciousness: the Resource Development Association megacorporation. I quite like the possibility of players in this kind of campaign coming to rebel against the evil, imperialist megacorporation (most players will, given the chance), only later discovering that this cycle has played itself out before, when the stars were different. That Lovecraftian vertigo on realizing one's place in deep time is really delicious.

Okay, But What About an Actual Campaign

Stuart outlines the basic premise of a campaign set in this interpretation of the Pandora setting and the outline of what kinds of scenarios we might expect to see, and I like it all so much I'm going to adopt it straightforwardly with a few tweaks.

First, I have no intention of setting mine in the actual setting of Pandora, reinterpreted or no. I simply have no attachment to the series, haven't seen any of it since the first movie, and don't plan to start now. I'd rather take these lovely worldbuilding ideas and use them to start from scratch. 

Second, I'm rather more inclined to play out a survival/first contact premise, rather than the more developed 'hive of scum and villainy' 'conjunction of worlds' premise that Stuart lays out in the specifics.

Third, I'll probably try to use a modified version of the Pathfinder 2e system for this one, where Stuart defaults to an unspecified OSR system. This is mainly out of convenience with finding players. 

Broadly, here's how I would structure such a campaign:

Intro: 0 level

The players (all 0-level humans with an intended class and a background) meet for the first time in Cryonics. They're all some kind of specialist that have (for varying reasons) joined a long-haul mission to colonize a faraway planet: they're reassured about the incredible safety of the cryosleep technology and spaceflight as a whole, but even so, this mission carries a good deal of risk. Even in the best case scenario, they'll likely never see earth again - humans and technology go in one direction, go back in the other. And even if they do one day get to return to earth and see the improvements made to it by this mission, it's over 800 years each way: everyone they ever knew will be long dead (1). 

Give the players a little while to talk and get to know the people they'll be waking up next to in almost a millennium. Let the players talk about why they're here. Normal, happy people don't do this kind of thing!

Then time comes to enter cryosleep, and all goes dark. 

After a dark eternity, they wake up in hell. Their bodily extremities are still freezing, but their lungs are on fire. Flashing lights and klaxons overwhelm their senses. In front of them is some... thing.

Tall and bulky, but most certainly not human: through tear-streaked eyes, they can make out something chitinous and green... except it's not actually green. It's wearing fatigues.

They'll be quite surprised when it starts pulling bulky masks over their faces... and then all of a sudden they can breathe.

In the moments to come, they learn about what happened: their interstellar transport wavered off-course on approach to the primary colony site on this planet, and wound up making a catastrophic landing attempt at nearly the opposite pole from their destination. Almost everyone died, almost everything was destroyed. 

But in their attempts to make a landing, a lot of cryopods and equipment modules were ejected and landed in a fan along the colony ship's trajectory, and though many of these were smashed to pieces against mountains or fell into the depths of the ocean, a fair number actually made it through the fall partly intact and even maintained cryonics functionality using their backup fission reactors. Including yours.

Once the survivors of the main crash site got their bearings and established basic survival functions at their settlement, they started following transponder signals and rescuing other survivors as fast as they could.

In your case, that took about twenty years.

The beetle-like thing in front of you is a human being... or at least what twenty years on this planet have forced a human being to turn into, in order to survive long-distance journeys on foot across the planet's inimical surface. 

The only place in this hemisphere that gene-standard humans can breathe without filter masks is the wreck colony of Splashdown. And Colonel Maine -- again, the beetle -- is taking you there whether you like it or not. Not too many specialists of your caliber survived the crash, and that means he'll get a big payday for bringing you back.

That's the premise of the first, 0-level adventure: travel from your crash site to Splashdown, across an archipelago dense with jungles and swamps, interrupted by stretches of shallow ocean. Outrun, outwit, or fight the hostile wildlife. Make it to Splashdown in one piece.

Maybe there's a bunch of other 0-level NPC survivors in your cryo-cluster, and you've got to keep as many of the alive as possible too.

Mechanics

To change assumed settings so completely, we'll need to adjust certain mechanics.

Progression, Ancestry and General Feats

At the start of the campaign, all players begin as 0-level gene-standard humans. As the campaign goes on, those starting characters can be mutated and changed in different ways.

The first is by deliberate gene modification: a lot of the researchers and equipment on board the ship was related to bio-genetic modification research, and boy if the alien environment isn't just lousy with samples. In play, this is accomplished using PF2e's General Feats: instead of some of the General Feat options already available, a given player may choose to undergo an experimental genetic modification: this may allow them to more survive longer in the atmosphere, or to be able to metabolize local biomaterial and drink the water (albeit inefficiently, requiring them to consume larger quantities compared to regular food), et cetera. I'll need to create these feats.

The second is by wholesale mutation into something entirely non-human. This can happen under some conditions when a human dies in the not-Pandoran ecosystem but their body remains relatively whole and exposed. 

The psychic essence of the planet itself reaches out to you, and offers you another chance: to be reborn as part of itself, as something totally new, and live. Don't resist: take this planet's native ecosystem into yourself, and allow it to mutate you.

This results in far more fundamental and extreme changes than the gene modification: mechanically, this is a full ancestry change, mechanically, wiping away your previous ancestry feats (and general feats related to gene modification, if applicable) and giving yourself a whole new set of feats, reselected up to your current level.

This comes with several major advantages: for one, becoming a mutant directly allows you to breathe the planet's air without a filter, drink the water, and metabolize local biomass. At the same time, you lose the ability to survive in a human-standard atmosphere or metabolize regular food. You need a new kind of filtered mask in order to survive in a hermetic human settlement, and those masks are produced much less commonly and are harder to find and replace the filters for.

Then, of course, comes the fear, loathing, and discrimination that is laid on you by some other humans. Mutants tend to live in a small settlement just outside the regular human techno-city.

Many mutants keep the mystical aspect of this experience to themselves, though a handful have confided this to human leadership, who are extremely alarmed. Eventually, this will lead to many mutants worshiping the planet itself as a god, much as the native sophonts already do, a major challenge to corporate human hegemony.

Third: the native sophonts of not-Pandora. Though at the beginning of the campaign, humans won't know the local languages and vice versa (and some factions within the human leadership will expend a lot of resources keeping people convinced that the local fauna are not, in fact, sapient), it will inevitably eventually come out that communication is possible, and boy are those early conversations going to be awkward.

The exact path taken by inter-species relations from this stage forward will be extremely dependent on campaign specifics, but it's quite likely that interaction with at least some members of these other species will become relatively routine, and with that, the party may eventually come to include some of them, especially as players flow in and out of the campaign and player characters die.

Fourth: 'Avatars'. Because of course. Humans have developed the technology to implant the memories and consciousness of one being into another, and this only becomes more common as time goes on. The full implications of this is explored more in Stuart's original post, but it's by no means unexpected that, with time, the party could come to include human minds implanted in the bodies of local sophonts... or vice versa.

All these ancestry options will need to be detailed and statted up with their own feat selection. Nontrivial.

Logistics and Survival

Unlike a lot of PF2e games, this would be one in which the Survival skill is core, rather than an afterthought. We'll want to change the system's existing, but extremely lax rules for nutrition and water, which at present basically allows a party to carry weeks of food and water without issue. We'll make that limitation harsher. 

We'll also have to consider what kind of human-compatible food is even being produced here: are they hyper-processing the local fauna and flora to remove toxic components and bring out the nutrients humans need? Are they performing hydroponics with purified water and seed stores?

Modified humans that are able to metabolize local biomatter will be able to supplement their food intake by hunting or foraging on journeys, but they need to consume several times more than if they were eating earth food. Fully mutated humans who can no longer breathe an earth atmosphere are able to metabolize local biomatter without issue.

We'll also probably want to emphasize hexcrawl mechanics and random encounter tables for exploration and traversal throughout the setting. The restrictions this places on a party's chosen activities, especially if their goals are located further away from Splashdown, is going to motivate a lot of very fun planning and side-objectives. Yes, we want to investigate the cryo-cluster transponder signal over in the western archipelago, but it's too far for us to make it on foot and back without starving to death. This could be resolved by:

1) Turning more members of the party into mutants and new-genes and doing more foraging

2) Establishing friendly (or at least non-hostile) relations with the local sophonts, such that their settlements could serve as places of respite, trade, and resupply.

3) Acquire forms of transportation that can make it through the thick jungle more quickly, while carrying more weight, or both. Or figure out reliable sea and air travel to bypass the jungle completely. Guess who has millennia of experience doing just that...

It may be a good idea to plunder the UltraViolet Grasslands book for caravan and exploration mechanics. Frankly, this whole setting would make for a good UVG campaign, but I'm more likely to find players for PF2e, so there we go.

Alignment Chart

Wait a hot second, what do we need an alignment chart for? PF2e Remaster completely removed alignment, didn't it? Why are we adding it back?

Mainly because, as I pointed out several years ago in Down With the Law/Chaos, alignment is actually a really neat tool if your setting does actually revolve around the conflict it models. And our setting very much revolves around the conflict between humanity/technology/dominion and the natives/symbiocity/harmony.

The player characters would start out Unaligned, and as they learn more about the alien world they're stranded on, they can develop a point of view and eventually a set alignment.

For the time being, I think we can make do with a single axis: Dominion vs Harmony. All the nuances and subtleties of morality can be left off the scale.

That said, I am tempted to add an Idealist/Pragmatist axis on top of it: very on point for a scifi game.

Fire and Guns

While fire isn't unknown on our not-Pandora, it's certainly less common and harder to produce: something-something non-reactive gases, something-something high proportion of CO2, something-something. 

One side effect of this is that firearms don't work nearly as well as they do on Earth: they'll fire, but they're much less powerful, delivering less force at lower ranges. Guns adapted for the not-Pandoran atmosphere tend, by great coincidence, to have performance characteristics similar to early modern gunpowder weapons which PF2e models: they fire more slowly, are more cumbersome, and take dedicated expertise to use well. 

Just like that, melee weapons and bows are looking like pretty good options, aren't they? Especially since they don't immediately give away your location to every hostile lifeform in a mile.

Magic

I've left off talking about the elephant in the room for quite a while. How, exactly, do we fit magic into this setting? We've managed to justify melee weapons being relevant in the 2Xth century, but what about literal magic spells?

To that I will answer: Psychic Mushrooms.

Or, if nothing else, it means that we have to curate the PF2e class list to emphasize the more relevant options and remove the ones that don't quite fit.

PF2e does have, for example an Intelligence-based caster called the Psychic. I didn't put them on the class list for my last campaign, but they make perfect sense here: we can probably remove wizards and sorcerers, but maybe we can leave Witches (their familiars being weird intelligent animals with crazy powers?) and we're definitely keeping druids. Not sure about bards. 

At some point after the zero-level adventure, when the party is getting set up in Splashdown, a combination of weird experiences and testing will reveal that they've developed some strange powers, seemingly related to the strange magnetic and biological phenomena of the planet.

This isn't a hard sci-fi game, I'm pretty satisfied with this answer.

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I think that's where I'll end today. This idea's got good legs, and as I'm looking to form a new tabletop group in NYC right about now, this might be just the right kind of neat premise to start with.

If you liked this post, be sure to follow the blog so you see the next one! Until next time, have a great week.

Footnotes

(1) In Avatar, Pandora orbits around our closest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri A, just over 4 light years away. Lucky humanity, finding a life-bearing planet and a room-temperature superconductor on literally the closest place outside of our solar system! But I'm inclined towards larger distances and larger timescales: this isn't humanity's first rodeo when it comes to colonizing an exoplanet, perhaps even a life-bearing one, though this may well be the first planet humanity in this setting encounters with preexisting intelligent life.

Brief Thoughts on Fantasy Monotheism

It had not been my intention to leave the blog fallow for almost six months after its five year anniversary. However, heading into my graduate degree, job search, and preparing to move house, it's fallen by the wayside. 

Actual gaming, however, has not. A week and change ago I finished my Pharos campaign in Pathfinder 2e, all fourteen sessions of it (yes, scheduling students continues to be a challenge). I come out of it still very much liking PF2e as a system, and wanting to use it a good deal more in the future. It fits the 'modern, character-centric action-fantasy OC-style game' niche very well, far better than my past forays into D&D 5e, and I trust that it will continue to be my accessible, mainstream game of choice through which I can seduce new players into other systems. 

I have other thoughts on PF2e and the effects of not having solid rules for fleeing combat on player choice and exploration, but I'm going to let those simmer a little longer. 

Today, a brief worldbuilding consideration: how do we square fantasy pantheons with monotheistic churches?

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When it comes to depictions of organized religion in fantasy, I find myself pulled in a couple directions. 

First, modern d20 fantasy games tend to assume a large, non-exhaustive pantheon of gods with varying domains, which players don't necessarily need to have any particular attitude towards, though they can choose to focus on one, and generally need to if they're a cleric (but generally not if they're a paladin, in modern games). This trope descends primarily from depictions of the Greek and Roman pantheons, as well as treatments of pagan religions in pulps like Conan and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. 

On the other hand, the large, monolithic capital-C Church, primarily related to the real-world Catholic church, especially through depictions in literature and film from Dracula (via Abraham van Helsing and through him the OD&D Cleric) to anything set in the Spanish Inquisition. Depictions of this church in a given fantasy campaign can range from central to distant, staunch allies or corrupt villains, but there's just the one, with schisms and factional differences generally pushed to the side. 

It's not very easy to square these two tropes, but by the gods people have spent ages trying. 

I tried to do it in my Pharos campaign with the Concordance Church (not to be confused with that other thing from Pathfinder lore I know nothing about), a unified institution on the small, isolated island of Pharos wherein each of the Gods of the Inner Sea have their own shrine and priesthood, sharing a big tent and working intermittently towards shared goals. It was a rather hacky solution, which didn't fit neatly into the campaign and generally caused confusion more than it simplified things. 

These thoughts were kicked off by re-reading Monte Cook's Ptolus, which also tries to square this circle. In that case, the eponymous city is the center of a powerful regional church of the totally-not-Catholic variety (instead of a cross, it's an ankh!) dedicated to Lothian, while also featuring an entire district dedicated to the patchwork worship of gods large and small, from the tavern-church of the god of drink to the squalid, unmaintained temple of the rat god. 

It's a valiant and effortful attempt, but ultimately not one that really resonates with me, and since I may be trying my hand at running another Ptolus campaign in the future, it's something I wanted to figure out early. 

I haven't seen this particular depiction of a fantasy mono-church before, so here goes the idea:

The church/temple as a unified intermediary between the gods and mortals.

To fall into the hands of even a good god is a terrible thing. Even the best and most compassionate are distant. They fight battles on fronts that mortals can scarcely imagine, work toward ends hundreds or thousands of years in the future, and see the efforts of a single mortal as parts of a whole tapestry, not their individual struggle. For a mortal to dedicate their life in the service of such a being requires selflessness and faith very few can mach, and many are broken in the attempt. 

And of the gods which are not actively good, or are actively evil, let us not speak. 

Nevertheless, the gods in ancient times made great demands of the people who would ask them for safekeeping, aid, or power. They would demand children for lifelong service, warriors for their holy wars, and sacrifices to appease them, perhaps all in one. The aid of the gods was essential, but the price was high. 

And then, one day, there arose a new church, created by some founder-saint of your choosing. It was not dedicated to any single god, but neither was it some expertise in comparative religion. It was an institution built to shelter mortals and intercede with the gods, not one person or one family or one tribe or one nation at a time, but for all mortals, even those who were not aware of its existence. 

It was a radical, revolutionary thing. One of the more rash gods probably smote this founder-saint in a very dramatic fashion. But with time and effort, it worked. It gained enough lay adherents and wise priests, and it was able to bring many gods, not all of them but a great many, to the table, and spoke to them with one voice. 

It sought to standardize, collate, and order the workings of religion. It brought together the many rites and rituals and doctrines of the gods in one place, translated and discussed them, and made use of that knowledge. It made legible and transparent what a god could offer to members of the church, and what could be demanded in return. It even brought suit against some of the gods, before the eyes of their divine peers, for wrath wrought upon the innocent, for covenants broken, and excessive cost demanded in service and sacrifice.

This was dangerous work. High priests in those early days served for life, and had shockingly short tenures. But over time, it became normal. The gods adapted, and so did mortals. The church did not stretch to every part of the world, and not every god was a member in good standing (far from it!), but it was large enough and had enough sway that even those who were not members had to pay attention. 

This leads to all the interesting complications you would expect. When all the complaints and demands of vast and varied peoples need to be boiled down into a single proposal for the year or season, how do you prioritize things? Who can you possibly trust to perform that work, and to bring it to the table? What kind of corruption can fester when there is a near-monopoly on the production of miracles? What new errors and disasters can come when the gods act through intermediaries?

Interest groups form. Committees for and against the flooding of a great river, cults championing the gods of winter and twilight against day and summer. A county whose repeated demands for the eradication of a plague have gone unheeded starts causing trouble at the conclave and threatens to secede from the church. Was this the fault of a bureaucratic mixup? A petition dropped in favor of other interests? Or perhaps were the gods just not listening? What would be worse? 

There are evil gods at the table too, and not everyone knows how to feel about that. Platitudes about the devil you know are a lot less convincing when the Tongue of Asmodeus is in the room playing literal devil's advocate while everyone else is trying to stop a war. 

Then there's all the other gods. The ones who aren't members in good standing, yet still very much possess divine power and can demand sacrifices and service in exchange for their favor. Some regions where they hold sway and the local population is too scared or proud to join with the church. Influential clerics within the church striking out on their own and taking a small cult with them. Every so often, a god will join or leave, and it's always a big event. That's how you get isolated cults out in the mountains or hidden in cities. Not all of them are evil or even harmful, but they're all trying to deal with the divine on their own terms, for their own needs, and are willing to dedicate themselves far more intensely in order to ensure someone listens. They just need to do this out of common sight, or else face censure. 

And there's no denying that there are big benefits for the gods who join as well. Yes, they must submit to the will of their 'peers' and descent to barter with mortals, but they find great stability in exchange. All of a sudden, sacrifices and songs and rituals are being conducted in their name, in strict accordance with their desired doctrine, in regions where they might have never performed a single miracle, by people who a few generations ago did not know they existed. It flows in like clockwork, and the demands upon them in exchange are predictable and stable from year to year. 

It's extremely messy, and I love that. I think this manages to simultaneously:

•     have the big, monolithic church which can be the source of crusades and inquisitions and corruption as well as organized faith and charity,
•     involve many fantasy gods of varying domains and morality,
•     invite interesting human elements instead of flattening them, and make room for a wide variety of possible adventure hooks

It also evokes, at least as far as my knowledge of ancient religions go, more of the spirit of how actual ancient pagan religious systems worked. The Greek and Roman pantheons are the core inspiration for these fantasy pantheons, but they worked rather differently than imagined. You don't become a priest of Jupiter just by devoting yourself at some point and staying there, it was a whole career progression, and you'd be just as likely to spend time with responsibilities over a general sector, such as the declaration of peace and war, as to spend your days organizing the temple of a particular god. 

I think I'm going to use this concept for my next d20-style fantasy game, whether it's Ptolus or something else. I think it's got great potential!

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Min-maxing Isn't a Problem, Except When It Is

I just watched this video discussing the topic 'D&D Min-Max-ers Are Valid' featuring Brennan Lee Mulligan and Jasmine Bhullar. There's less discussion of the topic than I hoped, though I disliked their treatment of the topic less than I expected. Still, I think they manage to miss the point in a very juicy topic of discussion, and since I had strong opinions on the matter I have come to inflict them upon you all. 

I must confess: I am a min-maxer. And I have a problem with min-maxing. 

Does that not make sense? Read on.

Hello, Byzantine

Before I played TTRPGs, I played videogames, including a lot of CRPGs and single-player games. I was, and remain, a compulsive save-scummer. When I played Baldur's Gate, or Thief: The Metal Age, or Morrowind, or Hitman: Blood Money, I would be constantly saving, taking an action, failing, and trying again until I could get it exactly right. 

It was not fun, but I did it anyway. 

In our neck of the woods, it's not unusual to complain about the tyranny of fun, the notion that bowing to the dictates of short-term enjoyment makes long-term satisfaction very, very difficult to cultivate in a campaign. This is a related problem, I think. The satisfaction of finally getting past that one guard in the most difficult and obvious way possible after a dozen tries is short-lived, and by committing myself to that I cut myself off from many other, much more enjoyable, approaches. How many cool assassination options did I miss in Hitman, how many side paths and schemes did I miss in Thief, because I wanted to bulldoze through the game in a straight line?

It's worse in RPGs. I recently went back to Baldur's Gate to try out an evil playthrough. The first time I played it (very recently, I assure you) the first dungeon I found was actually the Ulcaster Academy. On this playthrough I decided to make a beeline for it. I was fine until I found the vampire wolf, and realized I didn't exactly have a whole lot of magic weapons that could damage it. So I save-scummed. I tried a couple dozen different times to set the fireball just right, give the rare magic weapons to the right characters and make sure nobody died. It took me a while to remember I had a dragon sorcerer and a storm cleric whose special abilities could take it down. By that point I had failed many, many times. 

That experience was not strictly unenjoyable. I had some fun trying (and failing) to kill it with a fireball trap. But there was more frustration that satisfaction. I would like you to imagine the same thing playing out at a table, the players bulldozing into an encounter with a creature they cannot normally beat, and demanding a do-over each time someone dies until they can get the perfect outcome. If I had players like that I would quit GMing. 

By contrast, I wrote recently here about my first time playing Ultima Underworld this past year. I went in completely blind. Others might find the experience detailed there to be undesirable, but it was a blast for me. I was immersed and engaged. I was afraid and surprised. I died a miserable death, and loved it. 

The bottom line here is that many of the best experiences in gaming (video or analog) happen under conditions of sub-optimal play. Part of this is because sub-optimal play leaves space for learning and optimization, which are often enjoyable, but also because it creates room for improvisation and unexpected situations. 

Back to TTRPGs. 

I think games are at their most boring when they're optimized. This can be related to the creation of a meta (my best friend in high school was a relentless optimizer who tried to get me into TF2, MtG, and Realm of the Mad God by bashing my head with the meta first, no dice, many such cases), but just as often it's smaller bits of optimization like a character creation system that have a few, clear peaks. 

Unlike videogames or card games, TTRPGs seem uniquely situated to prevent the dominance of meta or super-optimized tactics thanks to the GM's freedom to create new challenges and issue rulings. That's why I don't regard D&D monsters like the ear piercer as something bad. These are the footprints of an ever-evolving cat and mouse game between player and GM, but one which neither side is trying to 'win.' The GM could 'win' that fight in an instant using infinite Tiamats, but it would be totally worthless, because the enjoyment is in playing the game and the goal is to keep it going. Without GM freedom, the players could 'win' by finding the local optima and crushing whatever 'level appropriate' encounters got in their way, but that too would be hollow because there would no longer be the sense of risk, surprise, and unpredictability which made it fun. Just endless CR-balanced encounters at regular intervals allowing for rest, stretching into infinity. Perhaps we must imagine Sisyphus happy, but I think players and GMs would concur with the Greeks that this would be a curse. 

But this is perhaps too harsh a treatment of optimization. It is an activity in which many people engage with enjoyment. And it should be clear that optimization and min-maxing are not quite the same behavior. Mulligan and Bhullar offer some pat responses to the issue, but it remains that min-maxing is a behavior which occurs and which many people evidently have a problem. I think they missed the subtler point, which is that min-maxing and roleplay are antagonistic to one another. This does not mean that a single player can't do both, or that a campaign cannot include both (examples to the contrary abound), but rather, that they are different activities. When one is min-maxing, one is not roleplaying. 

They come from a culture of play which takes for granted that D&D (5th, pretty much exclusively) is a storytelling game. This is not an opinion I share, but it remains that many people run story-centered games using it and show no signs of stopping. It should still be clear under these premises that when min-maxing occurs, storytelling does not occur. 

But we should not take this for granted. 

One doesn’t often find discussions of min-maxing in games of Call of Cthulhu or Paranoia. This is in part because there’s not much to optimize in either, and in Paranoia the character creation process invites other players to screw up your character and make them a gormless idiot. But it’s also partly because optimization wouldn’t contribute much to either game. Cthulhu characters are created to die or go insane, that’s the payoff, it’s fun. Being the only gormless idiot in a party would be tiresome, but a whole group of them is hilarious and fits perfectly with the game’s comedy dystopia. 

We might also consider Vampire: The Masquerade. I ran a one-shot of V5 earlier this year for my regular group, mixed results, but spent a while reading through optimizer threads about the earlier editions. Apparently the original Vampire: The Masquerade was broken in terms of character power right out of the box, with Celerity being by far the most potent physical discipline and Dominate, well, dominating pretty much everything. I get the feeling that this wasn't much of a problem during the original game's development, given that it's explicitly aimed at being a story game (before that term got more closely codified). If one is playing a game of undead ennui, I can see the horrendous balancing not coming into play much; the issue arises when people come to the game with the assumptions of tactical play and that the system exists to be optimized. Lesson: don't bolt a complex and badly balanced character creation system onto your story game. 

Early D&D is arguably in the same boat as CoC and Paranoia. Stats are random and hard to change, classes don’t give you much power, spell selection is limited and semi-random, a lot of power comes from magic items whose acquisition is uncertain, etc. 

Discussion of min-maxing really kicks off with AD&D 2nd edition: it’s no surprise that this is the edition which opened up point-based class customization, kits, and player-facing splatbooks, but also the one which enshrined the attitude that D&D is a storytelling game into the rulebooks. Two commercial interests, one to sell to players, especially optimizers and completionists, by expanding options for character creation, and the other to sell modules that could be commissioned and put out with a minimum of play testing (such as the Dragonlance modules, which began earlier under 1e but certainly reached the height of their influence in 2e, explicitly story-centered and horrendously railroaded products indistinguishable from the novels which they were adapted from/into) collided to create a play environment in which mechanics and world/narrative are at odds. 

This is the major complaint. The issue is not, as Mulligan and Bhullar seem to think, that novice GMs have difficulty challenging powerful characters, but that when I am recruiting players I have to deal with people who ask me if I know about the 'coffeelock' (this seriously happened, I blacklisted the guy there and then). Is it not right to respond to such things with wailing and gnashing of teeth?

To be clear, the problem is not that min-maxers seek to optimize, but that they view the game mechanically first and as a world second. My job as a GM is first and foremost to present a world in which my players can act. The rules are an aid to that end. I would rather have players who understand this, and recognize that disjoints and exploits in the rules are the result of mortal error, not the nature of the fantasy world. 

The problem of min-maxing is twofold. First, there are players who engage with the game primarily on the basis of system optimization. Second, the world of the game is one in which this optimization leads to dissonant outcomes. 

For examples of games which both allow optimization and have a world consonant with it, we might consider superhero games. I shall neglect to expand on this point. 

To ground this a bit more in the text, Bhullar makes reference to the 5th edition paladin/warlock multiclass, which is widely understood to be very powerful. It is taken for granted that this is an example of min-maxing, rather than one driven by roleplay. It is not impossible for this to be a roleplay-driven decision: I can easily imagine a paladin who loses their faith and turns to the patronage of some other being. But I would assume that this was not the case. 

Does this matter? Only insomuch as character classes are something other than bundles of mechanics. If paladins are only martial characters who can cast some spells and do big damage against some creatures, and warlocks are only short-rest based casters, nothing objectionable occurs. But hopefully, a GM and their player would want these things to mean more than that. This is a fantasy roleplaying game, and perhaps the paladin class exists to facilitate the fantasy of being an oathbound knight and the warlock exists to facilitate the fantasy of being a magician bound by a pact. Both of these are excellent fantasy archetypes. It would not even be difficult to combine them. Perhaps the paladin's oath and the warlock's pact are guaranteed by the same being, who grants its servant gifts from different 'packages' as needed. Perhaps this is a fallen paladin in a world where paladin powers cannot be revoked who seeks a new benefactor. But this would be unique to a given table, and this runs contrary to the assumptions of this culture of play: because a GM who grounds this choice in flavor might, say, require a quest to obtain the favor of the patron, or may even declare that in their world, this would not make sense and hence is off limits. I can just imagine the fire, fury, and r/rpghorrorstories posts that would result. 

Matt Colville has made a version of this point before, so I will reiterate it only briefly. The game design choice to separate character creation options from the flavor of the game is one which I would characterize as a failure to make mechanics and roleplay consonant. The result is a game in which the two are effectively independent, and thus a game which is not 'about' anything in particular. I have great sympathy for the GMs who complain of min-maxers, though they may not understand the root of their complaint. 

An example: I've run a short Legend of the 5 Rings 4th edition campaign a couple of times now. This is a game which comes with a detailed default setting and character options which are firmly grounded within it. If I were running that game instead, and a player wished to, say, take a dip in another clan's school for a powerful synergy, my response as a GM would be immediate and clear: this does not make sense. I might permit a player to effectively betray their clan and court another to learn their techniques, which would take quite a lot of time and effort and have serious ramifications for the campaign. If they wanted to keep learning their original clan's techniques, they might have to seek out a teacher and bribe or blackmail them, or find one in exile, if one such even exists. I suspect very few players would object to my placing these obstacles in the path of the player's optimized character, since it is clear within the norms of L5R that these mechanical decisions are closely linked both to flavor and to the character's place in the world. It is one in which mechanics and roleplay are consonant.

That is the sort of game I like to run, and I think it's the sort of game many other people would like to run, if they knew it existed. To dismiss complaints of min-maxing without seriously considering their origins does a great disservice.

Thoughts on AD&D Currency

I've been rereading the Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. It's full of inspiration for the world I'm building, as readers of the blog will know, and it's great for long and lonely trips. So much of the series, especially in the first book, revolves around money: Kvothe's near-constant struggle with poverty winds up making the setting's currencies very memorable and relevant. When a gold mark shows up in the second book, you feel the elation. I started wondering about that series various currency systems, and comparing them to AD&D's coins. The decimal system of the trapezoidal Cealdish currency, the iron drab, copper jot, silver talent and gold mark, the various pennies and half pennies, the partial Vintish coin, all of it adds some neat texture to the setting, with efforts to make currency legible and efforts to deviate from it both filling in the world. 

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Then there's the AD&D, which doesn't specify currencies by names, but settles on a gold-based system, described in the 1e Player's Handbook as follows:

The basic unit of exchange is the gold piece (g.p. hereafter). There are coins of lesser and greater value, and these are shown on the table below. It is also common to use gems of various sorts and values as coin.

            10 copper pieces (c.p.) = 1 silver piece 

            20 silver pieces (s.p.) = 1 g.p.

            2 electrum pieces (e.p.) = 1 g.p.

            1 platinum piece (p.p.) = 5 g.p.

Thus:

            200 c.p. = 20 s.p. = 2 e.p. = 1 g.p. = 1/5 p.p.

One gold piece is two electrum pieces, of which each is ten silver pieces, of which is ten copper pieces, and a platinum piece is five gold. I'm not wholly surprised that this got deprecated in favor of an entirely decimal based system later on. I'm not sure when, definitely by 5th edition, probably by third. 

I'd been accustomed to thinking of electrum as the odd one out. After all, the other coins used are single metals, while electrum is a natural alloy of gold and silver. It makes sense that it should lie between those two in worth, and it always sounded to me like something weird and ancient, a remnant of times long gone, a currency out of favor in the contemporary setting which could be more readily found in ancient tombs. 

But now thinking about it, I realized that the weird steps of AD&D's money actually makes perfect sense... if we're not on the gold standard. 

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Imagine instead an electrum standard. By excluding gold, we have ten copper to a silver, ten silver to an electrum, and ten electrum to a platinum. Perfectly decimal! Electrum fits perfectly, it's gold that's a strange addition! It seems obvious now, though I haven't seen it pointed out before, even in Anthony Huso's treatment of the subject. Maybe this was just obvious to everyone else? Maybe it was explained in some Greyhawk sourcebook? Looking it up now, apparently the Greyhawk books featured iron drabs, as well as bronze zees and brass bits, very likely Rothfuss' inspiration. Also, I had to do a double take when I found this page, which had five silver to an electrum. For a moment I thought I had been mistaken about the currency, but the PHB bears me out. It looks like D&D's currency must have undergone more than one change since 1e. That said, the page does describe electrum and platinum as coins not in regular circulation, more often found in tombs. That fits the exchange rates given there, which make it look like ep and pp are parts of another currency smashed into the copper/silver/gold trio. 

In any case, this has immediate implications for the implied setting of AD&D 1e. Copper, silver, electrum and platinum all fit together perfectly in a decimal pattern. Gold breaks the symmetry. It feels like an imposition, a foreign coin forced from without. At the same time, the player characters not only use, but think in gold: everything is converted into gold before leveling up. Silver is precious but tarnishes, platinum is hard to tell from silver at a distance. Gold is immediately recognizable, neither rusts nor tarnishes. It's synonymous with wealth. 

Assuming you even use AD&D's currency for your game, what this means for your game is up to you. I'm not exactly sure what it means for mine, but I can sketch some outlines. In this part of the world, silver and copper are the coins of the day for almost everyone. One is hard-pressed to find gold, and when it is found, it is mixed in with silver. Pure gold coinage never takes off, what pure gold exists instead being worked into jewelry and ornamentation. Electrum becomes the 'big coin' used for the storage of large values, high-level commerce and state economics. Someone finds a platinum mine. It's like silver, but it doesn't tarnish and is usually found chemically uncombined. There's not much of it and it doesn't look as nice as gold, so it probably finds a niche as a semi-representational currency in state vaults. 

If anything, the use of platinum as a very valuable coin might be the least realistic part of all this. Maybe there are very good magical uses for platinum, so mages seek it and its value is recognized that way. That could be a reason for platinum being non-representationally more valuable than gold. 

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Then something happens. Maybe trade opens up with a faraway empire, where pure gold is more common. Maybe this region is conquered by that empire. The new rulers want to impose their currency, the locals want to keep theirs. Both currencies wind up being used side by side. Conflicting local exchange rates proliferate. Non-representational currency is debated and tried, sometimes successfully. But premodern societies really like having representational currencies. China managed paper money for a few hundred years, but with difficulty, and absent a really strong central government people want to be able to smelt down their silver without it losing value. Proposals for non-representative metal coins reads to the average person as a roundabout form of currency debasement. Nobody is happy. 

At some point, someone gets extremely tired of all of this, mounts a coup, and imposes financial regularity by force. I think in my own setting this happened under the rule of Starlis the Potentate about a century prior. A tyrant, but his financial policy stuck around, and nobody is confident enough to go meddling with that again. The representativity of the various metal coins and their exchange rates varies, but the system is stable enough (and maybe the punishments for melting down currency are strong enough) that people use the coins. Of course, this still has to be normalized to the financial policies of other nations. Gold is the main currency of exchange internationally, and having the local gold worth the same as gold elsewhere is the best way to avoid massive headaches with currency exchanges, so the local gold coin gets pegged to that and everything else is set around it. As a result, everything is a nice decimal system, except for the fucking gold. 

So in my setting, at least in the core adventuring region, gold is used in the big cosmopolitan port city, the major towns nearby and places up the river that regularly trade with it. The farther you go from these areas, the less people use gold and the more they use silver and electrum. Gold is seen as hoity-toity, electrum is seen as the bumpkin's coin. Little wonder adventurers think in gold and not electrum. 

If the players ever grouse about this, I'll have an obscenely old coot come out of the woodwork to tell the young'uns how good they have it, not having to worry about which of eight types of silver coins they got paid in. 

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I'm also tempted, like Anthony Huso has, to move my game onto a silver standard. Silver is a bit more grounded and accessible, still precious and a lot of money (the silver talents in the Name of the Wind go a long way, and historical coinage like the Roman sestertius was silver), while gold becomes an aspirational amount of money, and platinum near-mythical as far as an ordinary person is concerned. Do I just set xp for silver and increase everything twenty-fold? Sounds awkward, but possibly rewarding. I like the flavor of it. But maybe it makes sense that adventurers should be looking for and thinking in terms of gold. 

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Iron, Amber, Wood and Bone: Using Courtly Rings In Your Game

I was just rereading A Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss and fixated on a particular bit of worldbuilding: the courtly rings of the nation of Vintas. I think it's an elegant little system which can be brought to any number of fantasy worlds, especially if the campaign involves courtly plotting. I'm planning to use this in a limited capacity in my Castle Xyntillan game, which is rapidly reaching its crescendo.

Each ring is carved or forged from a particular material, and is inscribed on the front with the name of the ring's owner.

Here are the rings and their different meanings.

The Metal Rings: Gold, Silver and Iron

The main three rings employed in courtly politics. Gold is given to your superiors, silver to your equals, and iron to your inferiors. In a strictly hierarchical courtly setting, this is quite simple and easy; a duke sends iron to a count, sends silver to a fellow duke, and sends gold to a king; the king sends nothing but iron, and receives naught but gold, of course.

This delightfully simple system becomes woefully complicated on collision with reality. Some people occupy multiple courtly positions, formal and informal; what ring do you send to one who is your vassal, but who by the whim of birth outranks you in another territory? What about a person who occupies a lowly position by birth, but has the close confidence of the king? 

The giving of the metal rings, then, can be a major vector of political intrigue. Sending gold indicates submission; sending silver implies a sense of equality; sending iron indicates a feeling of superiority, the implicit demand that you must be obeyed.

The Nonmetal Rings

In contrast to the rings of gold, silver and iron, rings made from organic materials are not in active circulation in courtly politics. They are an antiquated relic from the origin of the ring-giving tradition, when peasants would give each other rings made from whatever materials were on hand, every material with its own symbol and meaning in different regions.

Still, a few of these meanings are kept alive by plays and folk tradition. These are treated individually. If your players receive or give a ring such as these, something very unusual must have occurred. 

Horn

Rings of horn indicate powerful and lasting enmity. If this is given or received, assume a feud will begin if it hasn't already. It takes time and effort to carve a horn ring, and they would not be used except in the most grievous cases.

Bone

Rings of bone indicate a profound and lasting debt; not merely monetary, but often a life-debt. These are traditionally carved from the bones of a dead relative, although it is not necessary to do so. If the party truly saves a person from sure death or ruin, they may be presented with such a ring.

Wood

Traditionally, rings of wood were part of the same courtly system as metal rings. They were given to those of lower station, but who were too low to be treated with an iron ring. After all, a highly stationed noble could not use the same item to send for another noble of lesser status and to send for a stablemaster. 

Over time, the stigma associated with the wooden ring caused it to fall out of favor; if one servant received iron and another received wood, it was taken as a sign of great displeasure and a source of great offense for the recipient. In the modern day then, wooden rings barely exist except in plays, and they represent extraordinary hatred; the implication is that the sender does not regard them as a human being.

Other Rings

Two other ring types are extant, though they remain peasant traditions; rings of green grass are given to one you hope to court, while rings of leather are given to one to indicate you are at their service; this might be the ancient counterpart to the wooden ring.

Rings Unseen

Besides the rings listed above, the Kingkiller Chronicles mentions another ring tradition: powerful mages who have learned the name of a particular element forge a ring from it. These may be made of stone or metal, but just as often of fire or wind. If your party encounter a wizard wearing a ring of fire, they can be sure they are seeing a master of fire magic.

Uses of Rings

Giving and Receiving Rings

In courtly politics, rings are often sent with summons, letters and requests, both as proof of the sender and as an indicator of relative courtly standing. There are various courtly proceedings with regard to whether or not one should keep the ring, and how to return it. Typically, one should offer to return it. If the offer is made to keep the ring (servants and runners are to communicate this subtly), then one should do so, unless one wishes to insult the sender. Keeping a ring demonstrates some connection and courtesy between parties.

Wearing a Ring

To wear a ring indicates more than courtesy, but familiarity with the sender. If the sender is one's patron or superior, wearing their gold ring shows that one is vying for favor by obviously marking oneself with their sign and name. Wearing a silver ring indicates close collaboration and friendship among equals, while wearing an iron ring indicates special favor or gratitude for a particular subordinate. 

For the nonmetal rings, wearing a ring of horn shows that you accept the enmity and its consequences. If the sender then kills the wearer in broad daylight, it will at least be seen as a duel instead of a murder. It is an open invitation to violence.

Wearing a ring of bone demonstrates that a particular person owes you a serious debt. It can be insensitive to expose this to public scrutiny; it may be seen as a blunt demand for that debt to be repaid.

Wearing a ring of wood is so demeaning to oneself as to be inconceivable. Your players may do so anyway out of sheer spite.

In Play

Metal rings, owing to their expense, are likely not in common use outside of noble courts. If your party has occasion to deal with a court, these rings can be a little courtly practice with which to bamboozle them. They serve as a simple and intuitive symbol for courtly politics. Who is wearing rings, who isn't, whose, what kind, and so on.

As mentioned above, they may receive nonmetal rings as a result of significant actions helping or harming a person or family. it's one thing for an NPC to express deep gratitude; another for them to offer a PC a ring carved from the bone of their dead grandparent.

It's one thing for an NPC to swear enmity, another for them to send the PCs a ring of horn, to audible gasps and faints by other NPCs.

If the party has to deal with a noble, all the better for them to arrive wearing the ring of their patron or close ally. Your party aren't just a band of murderhobos, they're an integrated element of your world's power systems, so others had better watch their step.

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Making and Using True Names in Your Campaign

Last summer, I started and finished A Wizard of Earthsea in a single night. It was very good.

It recalls my favorite fantasy novels from childhood and young adulthood, such as the Skullduggery Pleasant books, which I now recognize were inspired in large part by LeGuin. I was especially taken with how she depicted True Names. So, of course, I took it upon myself to work true names into my game. This isn't quite going to be Earthsea rules, as creating a really faithful depiction would require lots of special rules and wouldn't translate well outside the setting, but here's a quick gloss.

Everything has a True Name, and knowing it gives you power over that thing. Learning the names of common and notable things, such as a certain species of flower, or a particular bay, are part and parcel of a spellcaster's studies. But the true names of specific individuals, whether humans, spirits or others, are obscure and hidden, even to themselves. 

Learning your own true name is difficult and dangerous, but very rewarding. If another person learns it, either from you or on their own, they hold great power over you, to help and to heal. Be careful who you give it out to.

I wanted to work true names into my own games, but wasn't quite sure how until I read an old post by Rick Stump, Names, True Names and Magic. In Stump's old campaigns, characters had both a True Name, bestowed at birth and known only by those very close to them, and a Day Name or Friend Name used by everyone else. Further, the Day Name might be changed at certain points in one's life, such as becoming master of a craft. 

This not only opens the door to all sorts of weird names, but it expands our options.

Broadly, Stump and LeGuin offer two views of True Names:

The Arcane Name

True Names are unknown to their bearer unless bestowed by a powerful magical authority or discovered through great effort. They are entrusted only with extreme caution, and can be used to help or harm the bearer through invoking them alone.

Learning the Arcane Name

Making a journey to the land of the dead and speaking to the ghost of a sage there. Make sure to pick out a thoughtful gift, and take care to not lose it along the way.

Asking for one's true name as a divine boon. If the party has just completed a quest of note for a god, a character would be within their bounds to refuse other reward in exchange for knowledge of their true name. Any real god would be able to provide such knowledge.

A Magic-User or Cleric of 12th level or greater may have access to the True Naming spell, which has the following properties.

True Naming

Spell Level: Cleric, Magic-User, 6th level

Range: See below

Duration: Permanent

By casting this spell through an hour-long ceremony, the caster may learn the true name of the target. If this is done with the consent and presence of the target, it works automatically, and both the caster and target learn the name. Otherwise, it may be performed remotely with a piece of the target, such as a lock of hair, and the target both receives a Save and is immediately aware of a magical attack upon them. It further requires 5000gp in sacrificial components particular to the caster, such as a dozen prize goats, rare spices from distant lands, dust of precious gems, etc. This works on undead and magical creatures, but not on the peaceful dead.

Some might protest that an Arcane Name should not be bought like this. I would reply, how many 12th level clerics and magic users are floating around your campaign world? Hopefully not too many. If the players get it in their heads to go on pilgrimage to a powerful wizard or holy man in order to learn their true names, they will have to deal with that figure's eccentricities, raise the money for the sacrificial materials, and may be sent on some quests to be proven worthy of the boon. That's a kickass quest hook.

Likewise if the party can't find any casters of that level, but a party member takes it upon themselves to become the most powerful caster they can in order to bestow this boon upon themselves and their enemies, that's a great long-term goal for a character to have. 

Uses Your Own Arcane Name

Learning one's Arcane Name should have some noticeable effect, and be desireable. Here's a few options for what an Arcane Name could do.

1. You become utterly assured in your personal identity, becoming immune to mind-affecting spells.

2. You can call your own name back from death. If you would die, instead survive with 0 hit points once a day.

3. You can call upon your name once a day to automatically succeed on a Save, make an attack, or otherwise succeed on a roll after you have failed. 

Uses of Another's Arcane Name

Learning another's true name gives you power over them, to heal or to harm. Again, take the below options as suggestions, although you could use more than one.

Calling someone with their true name ensures they hear you, regardless of the distance, volume or other factors, as long as you remain on the same plane of existence.

Reviving a person's whose true name you know with Reincarnation allows the caster to choose the form they return in. Using Raise Dead with a true name allows the target to return automatically, although a recovery period will still be necessary.

Using another's true name to harm them allows one to bypass defenses granted by the name. If that person does not know their own true name allows one to do one of the following once a day: cast a spell on them without a save, automatically strike with an attack, force them to make a Morale roll. 

The Birth Name

True Names are known to their bearer and to others close by at birth, such as parents, siblings, godparents, village priest, etc. They are not widely used, but they are neither so dangerous. Knowledge of a creature's True Name in a spell can be used to bypass magical defenses.

True Names are more commonly known and less potent, but are still guarded. 

From Rick Stump's Mage Guild: if you know the true name of your target they make all saves vs. your spells at -4 and any magic resistance is cut in half. 

Stealing a True Name

True Names are closely kept in any case, and stealing them is not easy. Magical compulsion to steal a Name from them has the following penalties, again from Stump: asking a Charmed target their true name gives them an immediate save at +4; if using ESP the target gets a saving throw to keep their own true name unavailable to the caster.

This applies both to one's own Name and those of others. Best not to publicize what you do and don't know.

Creating True Names

My initial draft of this post suggested a roundabout method using random word generators to create strange True Names like 'Jexago Phwlcyf'.

That's very silly. If you have an idea of what True Names should sound like in your setting — whether they should be ordinary names, fantasy-sounding, in a particular language, etc, feel free to make them up yourself. If you take a freer hand, your players will likely enjoy coming up with their own. 

They might end up being really weird. It's okay, not everyone can be named Ged.

You may wish to assign True Names to characters as they are rolled up, in secret from players, or to come up with them as they are discovered. Either works. 

More on Day Names

Stump really got me thinking with the distinction between True and Day names. Between the options above, I gravitate towards the Arcane Name more, but I can see using that alongside a distinction between Birth and Day Names as well. There's the name you were born with and which is used only by those close to you, the name you use in public (which may include honorifics and titles) and which will likely change throughout your life from a childhood nickname to an apprenticehood title to a self-bestowed name when you become a master of what you do.

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The Smiling Sphinx: A Magic Shop That Isn't a Magic Shop

I've never been much of a fan of the idea of a magic shop. I don't know of any fictional basis for it outside Harry Potter (which I read as a kid, but wasn't my favorite fantasy book), and it always struck me as a bit silly in tone. Plus, I've never run a game with a high-magic setting. Castle Xyntillan features a magic shop and a potion shop, but I ran both as specialty merchants with small stocks of expensive gear, and as a result, visiting them is rarer.

Then I watched this video by Taking20, which shifted my thinking and gave me some ideas. I now think a magic shop could work, in a medium-high magic setting, by switching the context from 'friendly neighborhood store that happens to have a Flametongue in stock' to a shop which maintains the mystique of magical items while allowing players some agency in choosing them for themselves, while offering a money sink.

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First off, it doesn't look like a magic shop. It looks like a restaurant.

The Smiling Sphinx

When the Smiling Sphinx first came into the city, the party heard a great deal of hubbub about it. Some foreign haute-cuisine to tantalize the nobility. It only got more attention after it opened, since it never seemed to be open.

It was built out of an abandoned manor house, remodeled at great expense in reds and golds, with stone friezes echoing ancient civilizations flanking the main doors. But there's no grand marquee, or even a visible sign. Just a framed pamphlet set on the door reading:

The Smiling Sphinx 

 Table by reservation only

Nobody you know knows how to get a reservation. Nobody you know even knows anybody else who knows. Of course, there are rumors about the clientele. A few days out of the month, a couple carriages full of elegantly dressed parties pull up at lunchtime. They are seen leaving several hours later, again by carriage, often with luggage boxes they didn't carry inside. 

The Smiling Sphinx is classy. It is elite. It is exclusive. You have to be in the know, high class, rich, famous, politically important, just to get a reservation. At least, that's what all the rumormongers say. None of them have ever been either.

Speculation about the Smiling Sphinx runs rampant, and nobody who works there has any interest in dispelling it. In fact, everyone who works at the Sphinx also seems to live there, coming and going from the old manor house by side entrances. 

The Smiling Sphinx may remain just an odd detail on the rumor tables, something for your party to idly conspire about, until they start making serious money. Once the party's purse has grown heavy with adventuring funds, say levels 5+, they receive a letter from a liveried courier.

You are cordially invited to dine at the Smiling Sphinx, with the full complements of the house, on the following date. Our establishment's dress code requires formal dress, and the surrender of all arms and magical tools prior to entry. A carriage will arrive at your residence at the appointed time.

- Ataxas Bloom

The party is fully expected to be dressed and ready once the carriage arrives. Tardiness or sloppiness is disrespectful, and will likely result in missing out on future invitations.

Assuming the party goes through with all this, they are conveyed in style to the Smiling Sphinx, where they are allowed entry. Inside is a stylish sitting room where the party is served appetizers and a decanter of wine. Everything is chef's choice. The proprietors of the sphinx have the best taste, and the sooner one accepts this the better.

The food is good, but hardly anything to get excited over. The service is polite, but not exceptional. Party members of noble birth will likely be miffed. And there's just 1d3-1 other parties there. 

Once the party is escorted from the sitting room to their private table in a private room, the hostess leaves them the menu. 

'But wait!' party members may say. 'I thought all the food here was chef's choice! And the invitation said all the food was complementary! What's going on here!'

The food is indeed, all complementary. The menu doesn't contain food.

Source

The menu lists various magical items, with corresponding illustrations and prices. The Blue Menu lists minor magic items. The Red Menu lists more powerful items, priced appropriately higher. The Gold Menu lists not just Greater magic items, but magical creatures and their offspring.

During their first visit, the party will just be given the Blue Menu. Just one, to share, so they have to pass it around. They will be subtly informed about the Red and Gold Menus. There will be notes in the Blue Menu that more potent varieties may be found there. The party will not be provided with them. Not yet. They haven't been approved to see them.

Anything you dream of may be purchased from the Smiling Sphinx, if you have the coin. Potions, scrolls, spellbooks, weapons, remarkable items of myth. Anything. 

But before the proprietor of the Smiling Sphinx is willing to offer these to the party, they have to be trusted. They have to prove they're good for the money, that they have the subtlety to maintain the shop's mystique. They will be made to wait. The proprietor keeps a close eye on who's who, who has the money to purchase his items and how many. The party will be exposed to many items they can afford, and many others they can't. 

Once the party have made their orders, the hostess notes them down, and returns with lunch. The party is encouraged to take their time while their order is filled. They can always ask for seconds. Entertainment, such as music, tricks and dancing, can be provided at request.

Within the several hours the party is likely to take with lunch, the hostess and her assistants return from the basement with their orders, presented at the end of the meal. They have already received payment from whichever institution the players keep their money with. Their items are loaded into the carriage that takes the party back home.

And like that, the party now has their Flametongue, or Wand of Cold, or Broom of Flying, or Bag of Holding. More to the point, the party is now viewed by others are people in the know, with access to exclusive levels of society. An invitation to the Smiling Sphinx transforms an adventuring party from a crew of wandering murderhobos into participants in important society, a force to be reckoned with.

What is the Smiling Sphinx Really?

The Sphinx is an enterprise by the archmage Ataxas Bloom. It's not just about making money, but about giving Bloom power by creating a sense of luxury and exclusivity alongside his ability to procure and sell rare and wonderful things. He seeks to cater to the wealthy and powerful, but in such a way that they come to him and not the other way around.

There are, in fact, many Smiling Sphinxes, in many cities. They are all made as similar as possible. It is a veritable institution unto itself, which status-seeking nobles will pay dearly in coin and favors to have in their own domains.

And a good thing too, because the Sphinx is very expensive to run. It's not the food and the carriages, those expenses are drops in the bucket. The problem is the security.

Every member of the staff has to be deeply trusted. They are usually magically learned themselves, apprentices to Bloom or his associates, using service at the Sphinx to pay for their apprenticeships and prove their dedication. The hostess that welcomes the party prepares spells and wears items to detect and deal with any subterfuge or ill intent from guests. The manservant at the door is tasked with putting any uninvited guests to sleep, or using more lethal measures if necessary.

And then there's the main event, the big feature which makes the Sphinx truly secure. Until the items are ordered, they aren't even on site. The basement of the Sphinx is the location of a long-range teleportation circle, built at enormous expense. It connects to a hidden vault at an undisclosed location, where Ataxas Bloom keeps his hoard, along with a zoo of magical beasts. 

All the Smiling Sphinx locations connect to the same central vault, and so pull from the same stock. That also means that if you want to break into the shop and steal their stash, you're going to have a hell of a time. Breaking into the Smiling Sphinx's vault would be a high-level adventure, with potentially massive payoff.

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Do you already use magic item shops in your games? Are you thinking about it now? Comment below. As always, if you liked what you read here, be sure to follow the blog. Until the next post, have an excellent week.